Kai Lenny Looks To Shake Up Championship Tour With Sunset Beach Wildcard
Hot on the heels of an epic finish at the Pipe Pro, the Championship Tour is moving a couple miles up the Kam Highway for the Hurley Pro Sunset Beach. The wildcards and event replacements have just been announced, and fronting the group is big-wave hero Kai Lenny. And with a ton of swell bombarding the North Shore over the next week, he could do some damage.
Lenny will be joined by fellow wildcards Zoe McDougall and Keanu Asing. McDougall, who grew up on the North Shore and recently released a short film with Pipe Pro winner Caity Simmers and women’s surfing icon Coco Ho, is the highest-ranked Challenger Series surfer from the Hawaii. Asing also grew up on the North Shore, and after years on the Championship Tour, has a deep well of experience to draw from. All three wildcards will pose unique threats and have the potential to really upend the draw.
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The Sunset event will see other fresh faces as there’s been some recent shuffling of the lineup. The North Shore’s Brodi Sale will get his first Championship Tour start and be surfing in place of João Chianca, who continues to recover from a head injury he suffered at Pipeline.
With the announcement that two-time world champ Filipe Toledo will be taking the 2024 season off, Morocco’s Ramzi Boukhiam gets the call up. And with five-time world champ Carissa Moore stepping away, Australia’s Sophie McCulloch is in.
The waiting period for the Hurley Pro Sunset Beach runs from February 12-22. And with plenty of waves on the wave, picking the windows to run is going to be the challenge for the WSL. The second half of this week is supposed to be especially giant with the Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational on yellow alert and whispers of potentially running at Jaws as well. Whatever happens, Lenny’s going to be a busy man this week.
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With more than 25 years of writing about surfing, the ocean and action sports, Jake Howard continues to share stories, profiles and issues that shape the surfing world. One of the premier subject-matter experts in the field today, he's savvy in the ways of print, digital and social media, his breadth of work is expansive. Getting his start writing Surfline surf reports and recording the phone reports for 976-SURF in the late '90s, Jake served as the managing editor for Surfer Magazine in the early 2000s before moving on to launch RedBullSurfing.com and cover surfing for ESPN and the X Games. Over the years, Jake has also enjoyed time behind the edit desk at The Surfer's Journal, as well as the World Surf League, where he worked as the Senior Editor for a number of years. Beyond producing editorial content, Jake has served as a digital marketer and copywriter for iconic surf brands such as Quiksilver, Roxy and Rip Curl. Writing thousands of pages of copy for Surfline, he has deep SEO experience as well. The surf columnist for the San Clemente Times, Jake continues to dedicate himself to the culture and history of the sport through his involvement with the Surfing Heritage and Culture Center in San Clemente.